by Kay Hooper
“It was the night before. You know. Before Merlin fell into the well. Farley was mad.”
Since the well where Merlin had been found had been some distance from the encampment, and since the children hadn’t been told what had happened to him, Sean’s knowledge of that looked promising. Unless, of course, he had simply overheard some of the adults discussing what had happened.
“Why is it a secret?” he asked Maggie. “Because Merlin fell into the well?”
“Let’s see if we can figure it out,” she said seriously. “I want you to tell me exactly what you saw and heard that night. Take your time, and think about it, all right?”
“Sure. Ma went to bed early, so I sneaked out…”
It was some minutes later before Sean finished his story. Maggie asked a few questions and then extracted a very important promise from the boy before he raced off toward Tina’s wagon.
Maggie reached into the pocket of her skirt briefly, then got up and went over to Gideon, who was staring down at a rather lumpy-looking heap of canvas on the ground. “Did you get enough?” he asked casually.
She answered in the same tone. “More than I expected to. And I got it on tape.” She patted her pocket.
“Wooo?” the lump of canvas said mournfully.
“What have you done to Leo?” Maggie asked.
“I folded him up in the tent.”
“Deliberately?”
Gideon looked at her, mildly shocked. “Would I do that? To a defenseless creature?”
“No, but we’re talking about Leo.”
He returned his gaze to the canvas, which was now twitching urgently. “I don’t suppose I could tie the whole thing up with twine and send it back to the store?”
“Better not.”
“Wooo?”
“It’s not that I have anything against cats in general, and Leo in particular,” Gideon explained. “It’s just that he keeps saying things I think I understand. Unnerving.”
“What did he say?”
“First he asked if I had a balcony in San Francisco, and then he criticized my tent-folding. So I folded him up in it. Maggie, if he’d been a Cheshire cat, I might have been able to handle it. But no. Your Wonderland had to have Leo.”
“Do admit he’s interesting.”
“Woo-ooo?”
“He’s weird. When he makes that noise, it just sounds pathetic; but when he chatters, it’s like listening to a foreign language and reading the subtitles at the same time.”
Leo began chattering. He sounded profane.
“We’d better get him out of there,” Maggie said. “I haven’t heard words like that since his tail got caught when he was trying to get into the bird cage.”
Sighing, Gideon knelt down and began to unfold Leo. In an altered and lower voice he said, “We’ll have to shut him in your wagon in the morning. Will he keep quiet?”
“If you tell him to.”
Freed at last, Leo chattered briefly, ears flattened, and then stalked off toward Tina’s wagon and his supper.
Gideon rose to his feet. “I’ve been royally told off,” he noted, then slipped his arms around Maggie, glanced around at the archaic and slightly mad trappings of Wonderland, and looked at her somewhat ruefully. “I suppose all your very strange family will come to the wedding?”
“My family loves weddings,” she said matter-of-factly. “And they bring interesting presents. Mother still talks about the urn she got from Aunt Zelda.”
By now, Gideon recognized the detour her mind took around intense emotions, and he followed obediently. “What’s so unusual about an urn?”
“Uncle Rudy was in it.”
Gideon couldn’t help but laugh. “He came for the wedding and just stayed, huh?”
“Well, no. Mother persuaded Aunt Zelda to take him back home again. He went in a pickle jar.”
After struggling for a moment Gideon said, “How can you say things like that with a straight face?”
“Practice,” she said, and chuckled.
Gideon hugged her hard. “You have to marry me,” he told her fiercely. “We’re forever.”
Maggie slipped her arms up around his neck, her eyes open, for him, all the way to her soul. “I know we are. And I’ll marry you just as soon as we can get Cousin Raynor back from France.”
He followed the detour again. “Who’s Cousin Raynor?”
“Our minister. He’s been marrying the family for fifty years. It wouldn’t be valid without Cousin Raynor.”
Gideon kissed her. “Then by all means we’ll have Cousin Raynor. And all the rest of them. How many are there?”
“Lots,” she said happily
“I can hardly wait,” Gideon told her, and wasn’t at all surprised that it was nothing less than the truth.
—
It was barely dawn the next morning when Maggie, sitting on the steps of the supply wagon, saw Farley emerge from his tent and start toward her. Behind her and hidden in the darkness of the wagon, she knew that Gideon had seen as well—and that he was turning on the small recorder that had so accurately captured Sean’s story the day before.
She saw Farley’s cheerful smile, then watched it fade as he got near enough to see the manila envelope resting on her lap.
The camp was quiet, the animals not yet demanding their breakfasts, and Maggie kept her voice soft. “Good morning, Farley.”
He came slowly toward her, kilted as always but pale now. When he reached the feed barrels lined up near the steps, he stopped and leaned back against one of them, looking at her steadily. “I have a feeling it isn’t going to be so good,” he said quietly, the rhythm of Scotland gone from his voice. “What have you got there, Maggie?”
She rested her forearms on the envelope and gazed at him, feeling sad and disappointed because she had liked him. “I have over two million in negotiable bearer bonds. And I have all the answers I came here for.”
“Answers?”
“Merlin was my cousin, Farley. I came here to find out what happened to him.”
He laughed soundlessly. “I knew you were trouble from the first day. I just couldn’t figure you out.”
Maggie kept her voice even. “You stole these bonds from a company in California and got as far as Little Rock, where you joined the carnival. The first chance you had, you found a hiding place for the bonds in Merlin’s wagon. And then everything went fine for nearly four years. But Merlin found one of the bonds, didn’t he?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Farley said.
“Sure you do. But there’s something you don’t know. There was a witness, Farley. Someone who saw Merlin down on his knees beside the daybed, holding one of the bonds. I suppose he’d moved the bed because his rabbit had gotten behind it; I remember he always kept the rabbit with him.
“The bonds were hidden in this worn envelope; one of them probably just slipped out. You should have tacked down the paneling the first time instead of later. Somebody saw you tack it down later, after Merlin was killed.
“But that night there weren’t any tacks. A bond slipped out. Merlin found it, and when he looked up, you were standing on the steps. And he told you, in surprise, that he’d found a bearer bond.”
Farley was even more pale. “You weren’t here then,” he said harshly. “You couldn’t have seen a thing. Who did?”
“Do you really think I’d tell you that? You’ve already killed once to protect yourself.”
“It was an accident!” Farley burst out. “A stupid accident. The old man slipped when I grabbed for the bond. I didn’t even know the well was there.”
“Why did you take him out away from the camp if you didn’t mean to kill him?” Maggie said flatly.
“I just wanted to talk to him, I swear. To split the money with him if he’d promise to keep his mouth shut. I’d waited nearly four years, Maggie. Four years. He said it was wrong, immoral, and that he was going to the police. But I’m no killer, not even for millions. I thought I’d grab the
bond he was holding, because the statute of limitations wasn’t up and the police could trace it back to San Francisco; they’d know too much about me then. I’d grab the bond and then run back and get the rest; he was an old man; I’d have a head start. It was a chance, and after four years I had to take it.
“But he slipped. And the well was only covered by a rotting piece of plywood. It happened so fast.”
After a moment Maggie said, “You stayed with the carnival and kept quiet.”
“What choice did I have?” Farley’s voice was jerky. “I knew they wouldn’t find him right away; by the time they did, the tracks would be gone—it started raining that night. I had to be with the carnival when they found him, or I’d have been suspected. The police called it an accident.”
“And you thought you were safe again.”
“I thought so. But then you came, and things started falling apart. Balthasar left. Everyone was tense about Merlin—I knew they wondered about the accident. Then Hughes came, and Jasper picked the worst moment to wander off to visit relatives. You thought something had happened to him, I could tell. Hughes thought so, too.”
Maggie was relieved to hear that Jasper’s note had been genuine, but kept her mind on the matter at hand. “Gideon saw you at that company in San Francisco, didn’t he? That’s why you’ve stayed out of his way here, why you watched him all the time. You were afraid he’d recognize you.”
Dully, Farley said, “He did, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
Farley nodded. “I knew he would. Eventually. You can come out now, Gideon,” he added in the same flat tone. “I might not be sure of much, but I know damned well you’d never let her risk herself needlessly.”
Gideon appeared silently in the doorway behind Maggie, and when Farley saw the recorder in his hand, he grimaced faintly.
“Well, that’s it, I guess. Like I said, I’m no killer. And I doubt you two are going to let me take the bonds and leave.”
“Afraid not,” Gideon said quietly.
Farley nodded. “Then do you mind if we go to the police right now? I’d rather not stick around and face everyone here.”
Small-town police cope with most of the things their big-city brethren face; the major difference between them is that in small towns the officers usually have time to catch their breath and play a hand or two of poker between crimes. Another difference is that life in a small town moves at a slower pace, and most everybody knows everybody else, so things get straightened out with a minimum of fuss and an occasional gentle bit of blackmail.
“Now, George, we know you wouldn’t want your missus knowing about those trips into Wichita to visit your lady friend, so you just tell us now why your store burned down before we have to start inquiring into how much it costs to keep an apartment in Wichita.”
Since they deal with crises on a regular basis, police officers are not easily confused or rattled. They are also quite human in their masculine appreciation of feminine beauty. Which is why the four men in the police station jumped to their feet and beamed when Maggie walked in.
The confusion set in approximately three seconds later.
Since Maggie was upset about Farley, her mind darted from time to time as she explained why they were there, and the officers lacked Gideon’s experience in coping with the detours. They followed blindly anyway, nodding bemusedly only when Aunt Clara, Cousin Rufus, and Great-aunt Gertrude somehow wandered into the story, and looked sympathetic when Uncle Raymond was killed in the battle of Bull Run while charging a Damn Yankee cannon.
Gideon, enjoying himself despite the circumstances, smothered more than one laugh and saw even Farley grin from time to time. Maggie was more herself than usual, confronted by four men who’d taken one look at her and summed her up as an absolutely beautiful flake. So maybe, Gideon thought, the detours were a bit more elaborate and confusing than they might otherwise have been, since she was reflecting flakiness.
The police chief followed her as far as Bull Run, and then, made of sterner stuff than his fellows, rubbed his forehead and said, “But ma’am, wasn’t that the Civil War?”
“Well, of course it was.”
“Yes, ma’am. What’s that got to do with bonds and a magician who fell into a well?”
“Nothing at all. Why did you think it did?”
“Because you said—” He stopped, visibly counted to ten or twenty, then resumed in a very steady voice. “Ma’am, you say that this man here in the Scottish outfit, he stole some bonds from a company in California. That right?”
“Yes. And—”
He held up a hand. “Please, ma’am, I want to try to understand this. The Scot, he joined the carnival in Little Rock, and four years later, your cousin the magician found one of the bonds and threatened to go to the police. That was in Iowa, ma’am?”
“Yes,” Maggie answered patiently.
“Okay. There was an argument between the Scot and the magician, and the magician accidentally fell into a well. The Iowa police, they ruled it accidental death. Then you joined the carnival because you didn’t think your cousin’s death was an accident, and you wanted to find out what had happened.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t know about the bonds?”
“Not then. Not until Balthasar was gored by a rhinoceros and Gideon came.”
The chief rubbed his face slowly with both hands. “Um,” he said somewhat helplessly between his fingers.
Gideon, who didn’t like seeing his fellow man in distress, spoke up then to clarify matters, explaining how he came to arrive at the Wonderland carnival. He sort of skirted Balthasar’s supposed fate, choosing instead to simplify the whole thing by being logical. Unfortunately, he had to cover several things that didn’t quite fit the bill, such as Sean’s bear pond. And a few other things wandered unconsciously into his retelling, until the straining expressions around him indicated that he wasn’t making much more sense than Maggie had.
It was all really very involved.
The chief finally waved a hand for silence. He frowned a moment in thought, then handed the manila envelope over to one of his men. “Here, Greg, you call the California State Police and tell them we’ve got some bonds that might have been stolen a few years back. And you, Kevin, you call the Iowa State Police and ask about that magician and the well.”
The young officer said, “But Chief, I don’t even know the man’s name—”
Testily, his chief said, “Well, for Pete’s sake, how many magicians could have fallen into wells in Iowa since spring?”
The young officer scurried for his desk and phone.
Farley, who had begun chuckling, looked at Gideon and said cheerfully, “You know, it’s almost worth getting caught to listen to all this.”
The fourth officer, standing behind his chief’s chair, looked totally confused. “Who’s Leo?” he asked plaintively.
—
Eventually, it was all sorted out—but it took a while. The California State Police contacted the San Francisco police, who opened up their files and explained their end of the case, then promised to send one of their men with the proper paperwork to extradite Farley and the bonds. One of the officers made coffee, and when Maggie said they hadn’t eaten breakfast, he was sent out for doughnuts. The chief took two aspirin and talked to the Iowa police himself, rather floored to discover that two magicians had fallen into wells there since spring.
“Dangerous place for magicians,” he mumbled.
“Like the Bermuda Triangle,” Maggie offered judiciously.
“But that was ships and planes,” the chief protested, then looked at the ceiling—or some heavenly spot beyond—and muttered, “She keeps pulling me in, and I don’t want to go.”
Farley, washing down a bite of doughnut with his coffee, said, “Maggie, will you testify at my trial?”
“I imagine I’ll have to. Why?”
Looking pleased, he said, “No reason.”
Gideon laughed despite himself, imagi
ning the state a jury would be in after Maggie got through with them.
She looked up at him with a gleam of laughter in her eyes. “Well,” she murmured for his ears only, “it was an accident, after all. And the bonds will get back where they belong.”
Before Gideon could respond, the chief hung up the phone and said to the room at large, “None of this is our jurisdiction, and I don’t know why we’re— Well, never mind. This is what we’re going to do. Mr. Hughes, the California police want your statement most of all because you identified the bonds and because you can place the Scot—I mean the perpetrator—in San Francisco at that company when they were stolen. So Greg is going to take you into one of the other rooms and get your statement, which you will then read and sign.
“I”—he gulped visibly—“will get Miss Durant’s statement out here. After that, if you two can produce identification with a permanent address, you’re free to go. Kevin, will you please put the Scot into a cell before he wanders out into the street? And read him the Miranda.”
“What’s the charge, Chief?” the young officer asked, still somewhat bewildered.
“He stole two point three million in bonds. Look it up, dammit.”
“Doesn’t anybody want my confession?” Farley asked in an aggrieved tone, getting into the spirit of things.
“You’re going to be here awhile,” the chief snapped. “We’ll get it later.”
Farley went meekly off toward the cells, his coffee in one hand and a doughnut in the other, one arm being rather gingerly held by young Kevin—who seemed as puzzled by the kilt as anything else.
Gideon obediently followed Officer Greg into a small room in the back, and the last thing he heard before the door was closed was a piteous request from the beleaguered chief as he addressed Maggie.
“All right, Miss Durant—and can we please keep Bull Run out of it this time?”
The taking of Gideon’s statement turned out to be a long process. Officer Greg was a painstaking man who wanted every i dotted and every t crossed, and since the sequence of events was confusing to begin with, it took some time to straighten everything out. By the time Gideon read and signed his statement and emerged from the small room, a glance at his watch showed him he’d been in there nearly two hours.